Blog - Recent Posts

Formulas - How to cope with weekends and public holidays in date calculations

Performing date calculations that take working days and public holidays into account can be complicated. This post summarises and verifies the formula to calculate the number of working days between two dates, and the formula to add a given number of working days to a start date.

Licensing - What license do I have?

A simple but important question that I see from time-to-time is - what license do I have? Here's where in the UI we can find this out.

Dataverse - How to Patch the 5 most complex data types

With Dataverse, the syntax to patch certain data types can look very complicated. In this post, we'll summarise the syntax to patch lookup, single choice, multi-choice, yes/no, single person/group, and multi person/group columns.

Controls - How to Transition/Show/Hide controls with a Sliding Effect

There's no built-in way to hide/show controls with a transition effect. The best workaround I suggest is to use a technique by Mr Dang. In this post, I highlight this technique and explain - what is an easing equation?

Formulas - How to calculate the distance between 2 points

We can calculate the distance between two longitude and latitude co-ordinates using a trigonometric calculation. It's a complex formula so in this post, we'll find out how exactly this works, including a verification of the result. We'll see how to perform this distance calculation in both kilometers and miles.

SharePoint - How to Patch the 6 most complex data types

With SharePoint, the syntax to patch certain data types can look very complicated. In this post, we'll summarise the syntax to patch lookup, single choice, multi-choice, yes/no, single person/group, and multi person/group columns.

GPS - 3 Frequent Questions about Location Services

Help - my app isn't picking up correct location/GPS values! If the location features aren't working, it might be due to these reasons that I most commonly see.

Settings - Old Layout vs New Layout (2021)

The settings area has now received a new look! Let's compare how the new look compares against the old, including a nostalgic look at what it contained, way back in 2017.

SQL - How can we count rows accurately?

With SQL Server, the Count and CountRow functions produce delegation warnings. Without these functions, does it make it impossible to count records from large SQL Server tables? The answer is no! In this post, I'll describe a trick that enables us to carry out this task.

SQL - Have you seen these Power Platform options in SQL Azure portal?

From the SQL Azure Portal, there is now the option to create a Power App ontop of a SQL Table. Here's a closer look at this feature.

SharePoint - Beware of numeric calculated columns!

Help! - my numbers don't format correctly or they appear with loads of trailing numbers. If we encounter this problem, a likely cause is a bug that affects SharePoint calculated columns. This post examines this issue in more detail.

SharePoint – 2 Mistakes to avoid when importing Excel data

At some point, many app builders want to use the SharePoint feature to import Excel data into a new list. There's a 'knack' to doing this and in this post, I'll describe the settings to make this process as smooth as possible.

Settings - What does the Delayed Load setting do?

What does the delayed load setting do? In short, it improves the speed of our apps, particularly the start-up time. In this post, we'll examine traces to prove that this feature actually works, and find out why it's important to take heed of the 'inefficient delay loading' warnings that the 'app checker tool' identifies, to help us take full advantage of performance benefits that delayed load offers.

What to do when some part your app breaks, or starts behaving differently?

Why doesn't my app work today?? If your app worked fine yesterday and suddenly stops, or works differently today, it's possible that an update to Power Apps has broken your app. If this happens to you, here's what you can try to restore your app to a working state.

5 Tips for when you can't sign into Power Apps

It can be so frustrating when some obscure error prevents us from logging into Power Apps! If we find ourselves in this position, here are 5 things we can try to resolve the problem.